Bob Howard is back, still dealing with the horrors of HR and HP[1], married to fellow agent Mo who has an interesting violin, and with a new line manager who seems almost too good to be true. He still reports to his actual boss Angleton, who hasn’t aged a day in the last mumble years, and who gives him a mission before disappearing…

The bad news is that the return of what it’s convenient to refer to as the Elder Gods, or some such[2] is rather more imminent than previously expected. And there are some sinister cultists who are quite keen on making it even more imminent, and are quite prepared to do Very Bad Things to help it along.

The even worse news is that Angleton’s Cunning Plan to defeat the cultists might just have gone a wee bit wrong, which leaves Bob in Very Deep Trouble.

The better news is that Bob gets a shiny new iPhone, which a helpful colleague improves by adding some apps that would definitely not get past Apple’s approval process.

As with the previous books, this is wonderful geeky fun, managing to combine a bit of scary supernatural[3] thriller with lots of laughs and some moderate silliness.

Apparently advance orders for this book were the biggest ever for one of Charlie’s books, which has encouraged him to get on with another in the series pretty damn soon. Which can’t be soon enough for me.

[1] Lovecraft, that is. Only worse.
[2] Extrapolating from Arthur C Clarke’s line about any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, the idea is that any sufficiently developed species will be indistinguishable from gods.
[3] Well, mathematical, actually. Sort of.